ipl-logo

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

951 Words4 Pages

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, starts out as just the story of how Henrietta lived. Throughout the novel, the author lists everything that the Lacks family went through in life. Rebecca Skloot made sure o include in the novel the exact details that the family experienced as well as what Henrietta herself experienced. Rebecca was sure to tell the story on Henrietta Lacks as the author just wanted to know more about Henrietta. In order for the author to do that she had to do her research to get all the information. Throughout the process of getting the information, the author was accused of getting all the information for money. The family thought she was being paid to gather all the information about Henrietta.
From what I have read …show more content…

The author is speaking to the concern of her audience just so they can fully understand more about HeLa cells and who Henrietta was and what she went through. The author states in the novel many tings like the treatment that Henrietta got and how the doctors just took her cervix cells without Henrietta knowing. The author also noted in the novel that Henrietta was treated with radiation but later down the road when Henrietta’s cancer spread, they had stopped treating it with radiation because it no longer worked. Along with Henrietta no longer getting the proper treatment, she also had no clue of the doctors experimenting with her cells as well as getting no knowledge of it for the rest of her …show more content…

In the novel, you can see that there is a lot of Pathos throughout it. It lists many things like the death and sadness. You read many parts in the book that are like this, especially in the Death part of the book. When Henrietta was in the hospital, everyone who knew she had cancer was sad. They were hoping and praying for her to recover from this but was disappointed when they learned the doctors were lying by saying she looks fine when she wasn’t. The minute the doctor’s put Henrietta on Morphine, she knew it was the end for her. During this portion of the book, Henrietta looked over at Gladys and told her she was going to die. Henrietta was already in so much pain from the cancer spreading to every organ in her body, that she felt and knew something was

Show More
Related
391 Words | 2 Pages

HeLa was an immortal line of cells that led to many scientific discoveries. The book “The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” has many different points you can view from. The book shows how history changed over time, how being African American and poor gets you no rights to privacy, and most importantly how medicine advanced because of Henrietta’s cells. Henrietta was one of ten children. Her mother died while giving birth in a barn.

Read More
400 Words | 2 Pages

In Rebecca Skloot’s novel “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” , she informs readers about “HeLa” aka Henrietta and also about her journey discovering the many traits of Lack’s past . Henrietta Lacks , known in the medical world as “HeLa” died in 1951 due to cervical cancer . She experienced frequent bleeding from her genital parts , due to a tumor that was in her womb . She wasn’t known for going to the doctor whenever she had a health problem , but in the book Skloot said that HeLa explained the tumor as a “ lump in her in womb” and had a feeling that she needed a doctors help. After being looked at by her doctor and being tested for possibly having syphilis , she was redirected to a gynecologist .

Read More
611 Words | 3 Pages

Hannah Henriques ANT Dr. Voelker September 28, 2017 Henrietta Lacks Book Review In Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot documents the years surrounding her research of Henrietta Lacks, a woman known to most of the world as HeLa. Henrietta lived and died a poor tobacco farmer from the south, living and working on the same farm as her enslaved ancestors. But little did Henrietta know that her cells would change the course of medical research and history forever.

Read More
1397 Words | 6 Pages

Her cell line is most commonly known as HeLa: He from the first two letters of Henrietta and La from the first two letters of Lacks. Despite this seeming positive outcome, Henrietta, specifically her family were not informed until 20 years after Henrietta's fatal cancer experience. Raising the inquiries: Was this ethical? Should the Lacks family be compensated for their mistreatment? Was the unconsented research on Henrietta lacks lawful?

Read More
1514 Words | 7 Pages

When doing research like the author of this book did, it is easy to get caught up in all of the information and forget it is from 70 years ago. What Henrietta’s doctors did to her is unthinkable now, but it didn’t happen in 2023, it happened in 1951, and back then the laws and acceptable practices were different. That does not excuse behavior, but it is still important to keep in mind. V. Further reading/ Additional Information 1.

Read More
903 Words | 4 Pages

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot and examines the life of Henrietta Lacks and her peculiar situation with her mysterious cells. This paper will focus on chapter two in the novel and how it becomes the most important part of the book when it comes to understanding Henrietta’s life story. Chapter two is called “Clover (1920-1942)”, the chapter itself dissects the early life of Henrietta and the challenges she had growing up. In this chapter, it goes over the gender, economic, and racial obstacles that greatly impacted her. It is important to understand the socio-economic conditions that led Henrietta to be treated less than human.

Read More
211 Words | 1 Pages

Henrietta Lacks’s daughter Deborah once stated “If our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?” (Skloot 9). The lack of ethics also points to another theme of Henrietta’s story, discoveries are more than the discovery itself, there are always people behind them. Deborah’s words also emphasize the human side

Read More
1231 Words | 5 Pages

Selfishness is a major key point in this book. As mentioned above, Henrietta’s family did not find out until 25 years later about the use of her cells. You can tell that once the medical field found something that could benefit them with money, and business, they are going to take advantage of that. They hid a big thing that violated an individual's rights to benefit them. Them waiting 25 years to mention it to Henrietta’s family also gave them the opportunity to not have them take away the cells.

Read More
474 Words | 2 Pages

This reading consisted of an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In this excerpt the author has visited the home of the living relatives of Henrietta. They show distaste and skepticism towards her due to her being white and asking questions about their mother, Henrietta Lacks. However they seem to warm up to her and tell her about what had happened to their mother. Henrietta awas a cancer patient, and when she died the doctors had asked permission to use her cells, on the premise that it would help prevent her children from dying from the same illness.

Read More
614 Words | 3 Pages

A main goal and component of this biography is to humanize Henrietta. Skloot aims to inform the reader about the woman behind the science; she is not Helen Lane or HeLa, but a woman who had a life and a family. Actions of the scientific community severely affected not only her, but the next generation of the Lacks family. Skloot goes on to describe her family background as well as giving an in-depth description of Henrietta herself. An element that Skloot especially emphasizes was how much Henrietta cared about her appearance: Henrietta spent hours taking care of those nails, touching up the chips and brushing on new coats of polish.

Read More
1099 Words | 5 Pages

The tissues were taken into the lab so they can grow tremendously. Henrietta started her treatments and surprisingly, she was not showing any side effects. No one knew about her sickness. She thinks that she could go back and forth to Hopkins without anyone knowing. Sadie, her cousin, tells Rebecca about how Henrietta was the person that would brighten someone’s day and a lovely person to be around, even when she was ill. When Henrietta would go back to the hospital, her tumor was shrinking and looking a lot better than it was.

Read More
1020 Words | 5 Pages

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line. Told through the eyes of her daughter, Deborah Lacks, aided by journalist Rebecca Skloot. Deborah wanted to learn about her mother, and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever. It is a story of medical arrogance and triumph, race, poverty and deep friendship between the unlikeliest people. There had been many books published about Henrietta’s cells, but nothing about Henrietta’s personality, experiences, feeling, life style etc.

Read More
743 Words | 3 Pages

Her doctor collected cancerous cells and healthy cells from her cervix and gave them to the cancer researcher, George Otto Gey, who was trying to keep cells alive for more than a couple days. Henrietta endured intense radium treatments, but she still died at the age of 31, leaving her husband and five children behind. An amazing discovery was made Henrietta’s cell were immortal. Racism is prevalent in this book through the limited availability of healthcare, unethical behaviors of the doctors, and how racism affected her family. During this time, there was an extensive lack of medical care for colored people.

Read More
989 Words | 4 Pages

Bushra Pirzada Professor Swann Engh-302 October 4th 2015 Rhetorical Analysis: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks who has her cervical cancer. It further goes to tell the audience how Henrietta altered medicine unknowingly. Henrietta Lacks was initially diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951; however, the doctors at John Hopkins took sample tissues from her cervix without her permission. The sample tissues taken from Henrietta’s cervix were used to conduct scientific research as well as to develop vaccines in the suture.

Read More
915 Words | 4 Pages

The doctors had pronounced her death by heart disease. The said that it was joy that had killed her. Only Louise did not die of joy, but of shock and pain. The irony in these moments showed how even though she felt free and wished for a long happy life it was Mr. Mallard who took all of it away. The sight of

Read More

More about The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

Related Topics

Open Document